Chapter Text
I haven’t prepared for that situation. It didn’t follow the plan I made in my mind a few minutes ago.
Yeah, I know that this is an excellent way to describe a situation I had to encounter. I apologize for that. It will probably happen again. It depends if I am going to survive this or not.
My mind was racing. Which is usual for me. But I would say it was much faster now than it should be.
If you ask me in what situation I was in, I was about to be attacked by two cyclops and as a weapon I only had a hammer. They weren’t big, which was one nice thing about them. Because I had no experience in fighting big cyclops, who I always saw wandering on streets and alleys. I avoided them and it always was easy. Back to the topic, I assume that those were teen cyclops, by the manner of how they talked to each other before spotting me.
So yes. Here I was. A seven-year-old girl with a hammer in her hands, dirty and in bruises.
Lucky me.
“Look, Larry, who we found”, one of the cyclops said with a smile on his face.
“Young demigod! Dad is gonna be proud of us”, the other one who stood beside him chuckled.
Both of them already started to move into my direction.
I slowly stepped back, thinking that maybe, just maybe, I could run away. It wasn’t the best but I could have had a chance to save my life.
Sadly, when I stepped back, I could feel the cold wall from the building.
Great, just great.
I lifted up the hammer I had found in a dumpster a few days ago. Well, if I can’t run away, I could try to use that old hammer against them.
At least, that’s what I thought. Apparently, it made cyclops burst out with laughter.
“Do you seriously think that that little hammer can scare us?”, the cyclops said.
I wasn’t scared before that, but I am now. I hadn’t had a plan, I was stuck and I was about to get killed by those two ugly monsters.
At that moment, I missed dad, really. Before he met my stepmother, he would always say that he would protect me in any situation. But he didn’t keep that promise. I had to run away from home, I felt like I was just a thing that he didn’t need anymore in his new life. With his new wife and kids.
What if I prayed to mom…? I don’t know how that would work. I have never done that before and I doubted that she would answer me.
I sighed. I closed my eyes. Still holding a hammer in my hands, slightly tightening the grip on it. Though I could feel my hands tremble a little when I tried to lift it up a little bit more. It was a little bit heavy, I had to admit that.
I tried to calm down. Not to listen to cyclops voices.
Just before I started to think about praying to my mother, I heard someone’s voice. It belonged to the woman.
“Hey! What are you doing there with the little girl?!”, it said.
I opened my eyes to see one cyclops being attacked by a woman with a messenger beg. The bag hit him right into his big brown eye. It made him fall down to the ground and loudly whine. However, the woman didn’t stop there. She began to beat him up with her own legs. Which made him scream in pain.
When the cyclops named Larry(yes, I remember his name) understood that his friend was attacked by a feral woman(who was obviously breaking their plan to kill me), he started to walk fast into the woman’s direction.
“Behind you-!”, I screamed, now scared for the woman's life. After all, she wasn’t tall herself. Those two could crush her easily.
I had to do something!
And right before I dropped my hammer to run at the cyclops, the woman turned quickly and punched him right into his face. It seemed like it was a really hard punch since the cyclops fell down onto the end of the big metal garbage bin that was standing behind him. With that he turned into yellow-ish dust and quickly vanished. The other cyclops, who was still laying on the ground, groaned for the last time and vanished the same way as his friend did before him.
That didn’t seem to bother that woman so much. Even if it should. Could she see through the mist? Who was she? Why did she run into this alley? Why did she protect me?...
So many questions filled my head while I stared at that woman.
She had a comfy crocheted dark blue cardigan. Underneath it was a big white t-shirt. Simple lighter blue jeans. She also had a computer bag that was hanging on her shoulder. I didn’t notice that before. The woman was still holding that messenger bag that she hit the cyclops in his eye. Some seconds passed before she put that bag back on her shoulder. Then she looked at me.
I finally could see her face.
The woman had a kind look. Her light brown eyes met mine. She noticed that I looked at her and smiled. Her smile wasn’t the cold and pushed smile that my stepmother usually gave me when dad was around.
Still I couldn’t trust her. What if she is from the police, just off duty?
So I stepped back. Slowly. Then again. Then I fell down. I could feel sharp pain in my hip. I forgot about the hammer that I dropped when I rushed to help the stranger.
It made the woman, who was still there, rush over. Her smile dropped when she saw me fall down and let out a small embarrassing whine. Gods, I hated being helpless.
“Hey, hey…”, the woman said when she knelt down in front of me. “I am not going to hurt you. I promise.”
Okay, I will admit. Her words reassured me a little. But it still didn’t mean that she was suspicious.
“My name is Adele”, she continued. “What’s yours?”
I hesitated before answering. However, she was the first person to help me while I was alone on those streets. Nobody seemed to care about me when I was all alone for a month. Or was it 2…? I lost count. Time didn’t matter here anyway. Just survival.
“My name is Annabeth. Annabeth Chase”, I answered weakly.
Back then, I didn’t know that my life was going to be turned upside down.